


Taxonomy

by Cesare



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-26
Updated: 2008-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesare/pseuds/Cesare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the prompt, "Sir Ian and Elijah in the one where they're animals."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taxonomy

Ian isn't particularly hungry when he wings down from the sky and scoops up a marten scurrying hopelessly through the underbrush. Hunting's been excellent of late, the succulent panoply of spring spread out under Ian's still-powerful wings. But the sheer glory of the catch is reason enough to close his strong talons around the squirming little creature.

He circles Bernard's lair a few times, hoping to impress his fellow eagle with his prowess, perhaps offer the marten as a token of affection. Bernard, however, is busily tearing open a large hare, and gives Ian nothing but a dismissive _kree_.

Annoyed, Ian returns to his own nest and drops the marten onto the clean bones of his last feast, a young fox. The marten attempts escape, and Ian amuses himself by allowing it to scuttle nearly out of the nest before knocking it in again with a deft twitch of his wingtip.

The marten looks a little different from the usual fare, Ian notes aloud. He has a fine strong voice even now, and enjoys hearing it echo off the rocks. "I've never seen one of you with blue eyes before. Or white tips to the fur. Is that a winter coat you've not lost yet? Bit late, aren't you?" Ian asks idly, knocking the marten onto its back with another brush of his wing.

"It's always been like this," the marten answers, rather to Ian's surprise. "I'm a snow marten. We're rare. And uh, poisonous."

"Hm," says Ian skeptically, taking up the marten in one large claw. "You are bushier than most I've seen." Particularly around the head, where the marten is positively fluffy. "And on the small side, under all that fur."

"Tiny," squeaks the marten. "Wouldn't be a mouthful. Also poisonous. And we taste bad. An eagle tried to eat my cousin, took one bite and spit him out. Dropped him right back down again."

"Poisonous snow marten, eh? What's your taxonomy?"

"Uh. My name's Elijah?" the marten offers.

"Your taxonomy, my boy," says Ian grandly. "I, for example, am _Aquila chrysaetos canadensis,_ the North American Golden Eagle. Note," he adds, twisting his neck to display his the golden feathers at his nape, fluffing them out proudly, then rearing up to display his exceptionally fine profile and the golden feathers bedecking his pate.

"Oh. I'm not sure they give those fancy names to little things like me," tries Elijah.

"Every creature has a taxonomic classification, down to the smallest insect," Ian tells him, pinching just a little harder with his claws.

"Oh, my _taxonomic classification!_ That! Okay, I know that. It's _Martes americana nivea,"_ the marten quivers, his overlarge blue eyes rounded even wider.

"Sounds likely," Ian allows, and unclaws the little creature, placing him on a grassy bit of the nest, away from the fox bones.

Elijah stares over at the bones all the same. The skull alone probably weighs more than the marten. "You killed something that big all alone?"

"Certainly," Ian scowls, flashing his hooked beak just nigh the little marten's nose. "I may be getting on in years, but I'm a better hunter than ever. Experience is the best teacher."

"So your fledglings must be really good too, since you taught them," ventures Elijah, pawing at the grass beneath him, turning the dried matted strands over and over to fluff them up.

"I'm sure they would be, if ever I had any," Ian says with dignity. "I am not so inclined."

"Oh?" Elijah grins, displaying sharp mammalian teeth with a charming little gap in the middle. "Hey, me either."

"Perhaps that's why the _Martes americana nivea_ is so very rare," Ian answers dryly.

"Maybe!" Elijah, improbably cheerful, goes back to fluffing the grass.

Ian's far too fox-full to eat the marten, and it seems rude anyway at this juncture, now that he knows the furry little fellow's name, as well as his genus and species. But it won't do to let another keen-eyed eagle see such an edible morsel escaping his nest, so Ian drapes a wing carefully over the marten, penning him in.

He sleeps very well that night; the nest seems softer and more comfortable than usual. Ian thatched it with some very decorative grasses when he made it, but he's generally too busy hunting to do much upkeep.

At dawn, he wakes to find the marten curled up on himself, tucked up close under the ridge of Ian's humerus, his soft breath barely stirring Ian's lesser covert feathers. Ian idly considers taking a nip of the marten's tail to test the bad-tasting poison assertion, but Elijah seems so peaceful, and he did do rather a nice job on the nest, airing the grasses without disturbing the pattern Ian wove them into originally.

Ian rises and stretches, and the marten wakes as well.

"Hi," Elijah says, and surely he's _trying_ to make his eyes look their biggest and bluest.

"Good morning." Ian spreads a wing out into the air; already a good wind is blowing up. "I shouldn't leave this eyrie if I were you," he says. "My fellow eagles will be on the lookout for any small movements on the rock face."

Elijah nods, big-eyed and silent, fur standing quite on end with anxiety.

"What does the venerable _Martes americana nivea_ eat?"

Wringing his little paws, Elijah answers, "Whatever we can find? Nuts, fruits, bugs... mice sometimes, but I'm not much of a hunter. I'm good at crickets though."

"You may find insects if you venture deeper into the stone. If you have the time, perhaps you can clean up the nest a bit as well."

"Okay," says Elijah, nodding rapidly.

"Good lad." Ian edges out to the rock face and takes to the air.

When Ian returns, well-fed on mice and with a spare for the marten, the nest is very tidy. All but the heaviest bones have been dragged to the pile at the back of the stone niche where Ian has built his eyrie.

Ian removes the last and largest bones with his talons, and finds Elijah eagerly, if rather macabrely, hunting in the bonepile.

"There's some trickling water way back there in the crevice. And lots of bugs here," the marten enthuses. "Crickets!"

"There's a spare mouse if you'd like," Ian offers somewhat formally.

"Really?" Elijah darts up to the nest and begins stripping the fur off the slack mouse corpse very neatly with his tiny claws. "Thanks! Hey, did you know you've got a whole family of shrews living in your nest, under the grassy part?"

"No," says Ian. "I suppose you may kill them if you like."

"Oh, no way! There are some seriously gross worms and bug larvae trying to get a foothold in your cave, here. The shrews are way better at gobbling up that kind of thing than I am."

Ian settles into his nest; it's been thoroughly turned and is now quite plush. "Then we will leave them be. And I will leave you be as well, if you choose to stay."

The marten twitches his pointy little nose. "Really? Just for sprucing up your nest a little?"

"And keeping down the cricket population," Ian invents. "Those noises drive me right around the bend."

"Deal!" says Elijah, and to Ian's great amusement, he shakes one of Ian's talons with his small fuzzy paw.

With a companion to talk to back at the nest, Ian finds himself less driven to prove himself still hardy and capable at hunting. Tangling with foxes is time-consuming, and it's much quicker to snap up a few small birds and mice to eat on the wing, perhaps bringing an extra back for Elijah if he happens to catch more than he needs, which happens surprisingly often.

The nest becomes ever more beautifully clean and smells fresh and lovely, and for the first time in a very long while, Ian's interest in his home is renewed. He brings back more grasses and fragrant new boughs for Elijah to arrange ingeniously into the tangle.

Elijah proves to be a quick study at nearly everything Ian has to teach him, and soon he knows the taxonomy of all the insects he devours. Sometimes he saves them for Ian's return just to get the right names for them, or to show off that he already knows.

Soon it's a condition of Ian's gifts that Elijah must correctly identify the mouse down to the species to earn it.

The most interesting change, however, takes Ian quite by surprise. It seems the improvements to his home have not gone unnoticed, and there are now two or three younger, robust male eagles fluttering their primaries flirtatiously in his direction.

Homemaking appears to be a more valued skill than ferocious hunting among the other eagles so-inclined, which only stands to reason, Ian supposes; a young male eagle would rather be out-interior-decorated than out-hunted by an eagle several years his senior.

He tries it on with each of his admirers, but the sticking point is always a certain quality of mercy that each is lacking. They all allow animals smaller than a mouthful to tend surreptitiously to their nests, but the notion of cooperating and holding conversations with an edible beast of another class seems entirely beyond their ken.

Gossip is surely spreading about Ian's peculiar requirements for a nestmate, but it's hard to care overmuch when Elijah is learning to use his clever little claws rather like a beak to dig through Ian's pinfeathers and pick out bothersome fleas.

Ian is a bit surprised one morning to find Bernard joining him on the hunt, but they corral prey between and toward one another as if they'd been doing it for seasons upon seasons. As the day cools into evening, Bernard drops low to the ground and finds a berry-bush; he breaks off a largish branch from it and carries it toward his home.

Curious, Ian does the same, and finds Elijah delighted with the berries.

"You've gotta try this," he insists, his little paw holding it up to Ian's hooked beak in a rather touching display of trust.

The berry is not much to Ian's taste, but the gesture makes it sweet regardless.

The next day, Bernard hunts with him again, and at dusk, plucks talonsful of flowers and takes wing toward his home. Elijah won't eat flowers, Ian's fairly certain-- when they've been tangled into the grass for the nest, Elijah merely plucks them out to let them dry before incorporating them into the prettily woven edges.

More curious still, Ian takes the liberty of following Bernard back to his eyrie. Bernard gives him a soft and cautious _kree_ as Ian circles, but he makes room for Ian on the ledge.

In Bernard's nest, happily munching flowers, is a peculiar little animal. Ian doesn't find him nearly as comely as Elijah, who is narrow and graceful and strange. Bernard's creature is, well, certainly strange; it's smallish like Elijah, but it has rather more muscle, sleeker fur, a shorter muzzle, ears that are round and protrusive as opposed to Elijah's peaked ears with their prettily pointed tips.

Its eyes are slate gray rather than Elijah's blue, its fur shading from dark brown to streaky gold, and it whips its tail about and gives Ian a cheeky little wave.

"This is Dominic," says Bernard.

Ian replies, "Don't tell me: he said he was poisonous."

"I eat monarch butterflies!" says Dominic, the flowers stuffed in his mouth notwithstanding. "I'm _terribly_ poisonous."

Bernard's arrangement with Dominic turns out to be much like Ian's with Elijah; Dominic has an appetite for moss, which was beginning to grow thickly in Bernard's eyrie when he captured the--

"What are you exactly?" Ian enquires.

"Exactly?" Dominic grins. " _Marmota caligata,_ I suppose you'd say."

\--marmot, who claimed he was poisonous and rapidly made himself useful by stripping away the encroaching moss and keeping the nest in good order, and even rather attractive in a slapdash, amusing way.

Dominic retreats tactfully into the back of the eyrie as Ian and Bernard shift and flutter and cautiously, tentatively groom one another's golden necks.

Back home for the evening, Ian asks Elijah, "Do we happen to have a moss problem, by any chance?"

"There's a bunch back by the water in the crevice," says Elijah. "I've been scraping it off the wall before it can grow any further up here. Why, does it smell bad?" His pointy nose quivers.

"No, only wondering."

He hunts with Bernard again the next day, and brings a persimmon back with them for Elijah. Introducing them goes as smoothly as Ian could have hoped, with Elijah resoundingly polite and on his very best behavior.

In the weeks following, Ian hunts with Bernard daily; they circle each other closer and closer, but Ian's never sure quite what's holding them back until Bernard perches with him in a tall oak to finish off their finches.

"Winter's on its way," Bernard observes. "Prey will be thin on the ground soon."

"There's always something worth hunting for," Ian reassures him.

"But say... if you were going hungry," says Bernard. "Or if I were. Would you fall upon Elijah?"

"No more than you would Dominic."

"That's no answer," Bernard says sharply, and punctuates it with an unhappy little _kree_.

"No," Ian says, drawing himself up proudly. If this is the end of their circuitous romance, so be it. "I agreed that I would not prey upon him, and I wouldn't break my word."

Bernard nods. "Would you make the same agreement with Dominic?"

"If ever I had cause," says Ian, more slowly, "of course, I would."

Bernard scratches Ian's neck with his beak, just where Ian likes best. "I doubt we have any hunting worries anyway," he murmurs. "Between the two of us."

"And the eyrie will be warmer with two," Ian answers, ruffling Bernard's golden feathers in return. "Or, I suppose, strictly speaking, four."

There's little dispute over where to live; Bernard's home is higher, but not as spacious as Ian's larger eyrie backed by its deep fissure in the rock. Elijah promises to thatch off the chilly depths before winter bites in, with only room enough for marten and marmot to pass through for moss and water.

It only remains to bring over Bernard's favorite boughs and branches to expand the nest, and hope that Dominic and Elijah get along. Bernard has some small worries on that score, particularly since Dominic is a plant-eater while Elijah is happily omnivorous.

No matter how often Ian assures him that Elijah's too small to sink his teeth into Dominic and live to tell the tale, Bernard goes on fretting until they're all moved in together and there's nothing to do but see what happens.

"Hiya," says Dominic.

"Hi. _Martes americana nivea,"_ Elijah says, presenting his paw.

"What's that when it's at home, then?" Dominic asks, wrapping his rather longer paw around Elijah's.

"That's... me. Snow marten. Poisonous snow marten," Elijah adds hastily. "My name's Elijah."

"I'm a marmot," Dominic offers, "awfully poisonous as well, isn't that a coincidence. _Marmota caligata_ if you like, but really, Dominic will do nicely."

"Okay. Dominic," Elijah smiles tentatively. "I could show you where to find the moss and water. Or. I have some dried persimmons if you're hungry. Or, um, there's some shrews that live under the nest, if you want to meet them, but they just squeak."

Dominic smiles wider and wider throughout all that, glancing down to their paws, where Elijah still grips him, almost clinging.

"Sorry. Sorry," Elijah drops Dominic's paw as if it's, well, poisonous, and clutches his own paws together instead.

"No bother," says Dominic. He's casual, easy in comparison to Elijah's nerves, except that his tail seems to be curling around to just brush the tips of Elijah's soft back feet.

Elijah jumps a little, his own tail bushing out in alarm before he wraps it around his toes demurely, the tips of his ears shivering.

Dominic looks as if he couldn't be more pleased. "Bit chilly, isn't it?" He sidles just a bit closer to Elijah. "What d'you do around here to keep warm?"

"Okay! So! I'm going to go get some water," Elijah announces, and disappears through the back thatching. Dominic smooths his fur back and follows.

"You seem to have got it backwards," Ian says, muffling his laughter against Bernard's wing. "Dominic's by far the more predatory of the two."

The autumn provides endless amusement at the eyrie, as Dominic seems to take great delight in teasing and flirting with Elijah. Gradually Elijah relaxes and learns to enjoy the attention, and soon they're listening to birdsong together in the fall sunset, the gleam of dwindling light making it hard to tell where white-tipped fur ends and golden-brown fur begins.

As the season wanes, Dominic develops a taste for grasshoppers, and Elijah's diet broadens to include the lush green moss that grows in the dampest nooks of the crevice.

Ian and Bernard return from their hunts bearing an excess of grasses and dried soft leaves, and pretend not to notice as the eyrie gains another layer of thatching and a new heap of cozy bedding.

With all that insulation, two small fuzzy mammalian bodies curled close together and two great golden eagles snug in their broad and beautiful nest, the eyrie stays warm through the deepest dark of winter.

***

 

[](http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v196/cesare/otp/?action=view&current=marmot.jpg) [](http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v196/cesare/otp/?action=view&current=marten.jpg)  
Dom-marmot/Elijah-marten


End file.
